High above the Twelveswood, the Raven circles, evermore seeking out truth hidden amongst the shadows of the trees.

In this edition, field correspondent Oliver Goodfellow has set his sights upon an odd, new festival recently arrived in Gridania, called Hatching-tide by its founder and followers. We try to learn more about what it is, whence it came, and what it portends.

● Prophet or Pretender?

No doubt you have all heard rumors of a motley crew of street urchins and spriggans, singing strange songs while dutifully dispensing outlandishly colored eggs to wary bystanders. These are the propagators of Hatching-tide, a lavish new festival conceived by an eccentric Miqo'te named Jihli Aliapoh, who to her followers is simply known as "the Dreamer." To learn more about the celebration, I attempted to speak with Jihli. It only took a few moments with the young woman, however, for me to realize I would need to take a different approach if I were to glean anything of value from our conversation. You see, the Dreamer only ever speaks when she is reciting from what I later learned was called the Dreamer's Gospel. Rather than attempting to decipher her cryptic musings, I instead opted to speak with a boy who appeared to be the Dreamer's famulus. And as it turned out, the boy, Bricot, was more than happy to answer all my queries.

As Bricot tells it, the idea for Hatching-tide came via a revelation experienced by Jihli late one starry evening. After drifting off into slumber, she was supposedly visited by twelve magnificent Archons who descended from the heavens on brilliantly colored eggs. As she stood in awe, one of the Archons stepped forth, placed his hand on Jihli's shoulder and whispered into her ear, "Rise, young Dreamer, and make ready the vessel for our return." The remaining Archons then began to sing, reciting the one hundred and twenty verses of the Dreamer's Gospel, and only when the echoes of the last line had faded did Jihli awake a changed woman.

● You Can't Make an Archon Without Hatching Some Eggs

After penning all one hundred and twenty verses of the gospel, which rang clear in her memory long after her vision had passed, Jihli set forth to begin what she believed was the bidding of the Archons. To do this, she first needed eggs. Hundreds and thousands of eggs. Realizing that she could not achieve this daunting task alone, she enlisted the help of the city's children, whom she sent out in search of spare eggs lying about the city. In another move of genius, she convinced a local bury of spriggans to steal eggs from dodo nests, utilizing the voidsents' natural instinct to hoard small, ovoid objects. Once the eggs were gathered, she then began coloring them in the same vibrant patterns she recalled from her dream.

At first, the public scoffed at this wide-eyed Miqo'te and her ***** troupe, but the more they witnessed the passion with which she sung the gospel, the raw determination with which she painted her eggs, the more they, too, began to believe themselves that the Archons were destined to return. And now, the Dreamer has scores of followers busy "warming" eggs in preparation for the Hatching Hour, a final ceremony in which the eggs are used to beckon the Archons back to Eorzea.

● The Maddening Crowd

Even as we speak, the Dreamer's congregation continues to grow, but is this phenomenon truly a result of the masses belief in the prophecy Jihli sings, or is it something else that drives them, something less divine? It was only after further investigation, that I learned Jihli is offering specially crafted "egg caps" to all those who assist her in preparing for the Hatching Hour. Could it be that material lust is the true driving factor behind this festival's popularity? Perhaps we will never know, but what is certain, when the Hatching Hour comes and the celebration reaches its climax, all eyes will be on the Dreamer and her eggs. Will the Archons descend upon Eorzea, or will Jihli and her gospel fade into obscurity? The answer will be clear only when the Keeper's sands have run their course.

Oliver Goodfellow

DurationThursday, April 15 (8:00 a.m.) to Monday, May 9 (3:00 p.m.)

The Dreamers

Jihli Aliapoh, it appears, is not the only one claiming to have had visions of the Archons' return. Similarly garbed Dreamers have appeared in Limsa Lominsa and Ul'dah as well.

Why did they think this was the best thing to put out over the litany of things wrong with this game.

This game still does not feel like a final fantasy game.

From launch to present day the question remains.

WTF are you thinking?!

Recent Letter from Producer...

The dev team is actually split up into a bunch of smaller teams, each dedicated to a certain facet of the game. Off the top of my head, there’s the scenario team, the world settings team (including seasonal events), the item team, the crafting and gathering team, the battle team, the level design team, the art team, the character team, the BG team, the UI team, and so on and so forth. Each team focuses on certain game content or a particular system, and all teams’ tasks are ongoing simultaneously. There are VFX, animation, and cutscenes as well, so quite a few teams. Within each, there are staff members whose job it is to carry out the tasks of each patch, and others who focus on the large-scale elements and core of the game.

When deciding what goes in a patch, we meld together my raw ideas with the team leaders’ proposals and move forward from there, checking up on the status on a daily basis.

So in my last letter when I announced we’d be prioritizing the upcoming seasonal event in 1.17, it didn’t clandestinely imply we’d be halting other tasks in other areas. No need for worry there. Some players are also voicing concern over the difference between patch content and the more fundamental changes planned. The latter, such as overhauling the battle system, are planned for the long-term and don’t coincide with the pace of our regular patches. They are designed in parallel with other large-scale changes, such as new events or UI revamps, and we only begin testing their implementation after careful consideration of both specs and cost. This is why the whole process takes time. Of course, that isn’t to say we don’t want you to see any visible changes during this period. We are implementing the things that can be implemented, and can be done so quickly. I hope I can squash these and any further misconceptions in future letters and forum posts.

To sum up, we’re updating those aspects of the game whose priority is high, and which can be updated relatively easily, while more radical and profound changes, such as those revolving around latency, auto-attack, battle, the Armoury system, the job system, dungeons, movement, modes of transport—these are currently under development on their own, completely independent schedules.

To be honest, that letter disproves none of the flack that people give for them focusing energy on these events.

In that letter, he basically says there's a team devoted partly to these events... maybe that team should merged into one of the teams working on more important things for extra manpower in those areas.

There are people working on the things wrong. Lots of them. Why not pulls these "minor fare" workers and have them join the others?

A few things to remember here:

1. Some players (particularly in Japan where sales are still strong) like the game as it is. They would pay for the game as it is. For those players, the best thing to do is to continue to flesh out the world with holidays and other such minor fare.

2. There is a lot more flexibility with all the minor fare than there is major changes such as adding airships, chocobos, etc. They put in an event with bell. You don't like the bells and ignore them. Then you complain and *poof* no bells. Everyone moves on. Things like chocobos, airships, the battle system can not be so easily avoided. So as Yoshi-P said they are very concerned about getting it right. So just like you have opening acts you have the minor fare to help lessen the blow of the main act getting ready. When Nikki Minaj opens for Britney Spears, nobody asks why she's not helping Britney sing Toxic.

3. Bigger is not always better. Or as the saying goes too many cooks spoil the stew. Just like there is an optimal party size there is an optimal team size before you have people tripping over each other and negating each other in the group. Particularly in this case where there is a considerable amount of brainstorming involved. The polls alone showed how many different ideas people have with how to fix the battle system, implement chocobos, etc. Could you imagine those conversations if the entire FFXIV team was having it? More programmers can execute faster, but when you're talking about design the larger numbers only slow things down. Now when they get to the part where it's all grunt work, maybe pulling them then would help. But until then it's better they make themselves useful being creative and putting something out.

4. Let's take the example of the side quests they put out. Say they started working on them in February. It took them 1 month and nobody liked them. So now we're at two months they patched it. People still complaining. They are still patching and adding. This can go on indefinitely. Do you really want to do this with every single mechanic of the game?

5. This is the first, if not only case of a game being rebuilt like this. Either it already works and the designers are trying to keep it fresh (WOW: Cata), or it fails goes back to the drawing board and gets a rerelease (APB). So this is an inside look at how designing a game works with a large scale company such as SE. With a smaller company then everyone working on one aspect at a time probably makes more sense, but with SE the FFXIV team can easily be anywhere between 100 and 1000 people (someone feel free to give me a more accurate number). Yoshi-P is tossing one liners about a very intricate process. While I'm sure some things can't be as difficult as he implies (he knows he wants the grand companies so I don't know why they're taking so long other than the battle system priority), they're not as simple either( anyone knows how long it takes to design a new zone? Especially without reusing the same layouts?).

I could go on, but the point is there are reasons to have such minor fare and people working on it. It's obvious the number of problems XIV had because of the first dev group rushed to meet a deadline (read beat cataclysm out the gate). Putting in an entire new group just to rush them would be self defeating.

Personally, this game is starting to feel like FFXII to me. But to be fair, XII had the same everyone could be everything so nobody's special problem and I didn't finish it. So to me they have much more work to do. I'm just being patient.

Also, let's give the employees of SE some slack. Japan has just gone through (and continues to go through) a devastating tragedy. I am willing to bet that many employees have been effected by this, either through friends or loved ones killed, or their homes destroyed, or their jobs destroyed. There are hundreds of thousands without homes, and the threat of speading radiation is real. Given all that, I am surprised that anyhone can keep their minds on their work.

Even if you grant them that this is an entirely different team that is really best utilized in this way, it does beg the question of why other MMOs can rush out decent fixes within a week and FFXIV/FFXI seem to take months for minor adjustments.

Never confuse your inference as the listener for an implication of the speaker.

Good games are subjective like good food is subjective. You're not going to seriously tell me that there's not a psychological basis for why pizza is great and lutefisk is revolting. The thing about subjectivity is that, as subjects go, humans actually have a great deal in common.

Even if you grant them that this is an entirely different team that is really best utilized in this way, it does beg the question of why other MMOs can rush out decent fixes within a week and FFXIV/FFXI seem to take months for minor adjustments.

Two teams- monthly patch team, major overhaul team. Both work independently.

When your team is split like that, is it surprising the monthly patches aren't as large as they could be?

____________________________

SE:

Quote:

We really want to compete against World of Warcraft and for example the new Star Wars MMO.

but with SE the FFXIV team can easily be anywhere between 100 and 1000 people (someone feel free to give me a more accurate number). Yoshi-P is tossing one liners about a very intricate process. While I'm sure some things can't be as difficult as he implies (he knows he wants the grand companies so I don't know why they're taking so long other than the battle system priority), they're not as simple either( anyone knows how long it takes to design a new zone? Especially without reusing the same layouts?).

I think you are wildly overestimating the number of people in the dev team. I would guess at something like 15 people or so.

but with SE the FFXIV team can easily be anywhere between 100 and 1000 people (someone feel free to give me a more accurate number). Yoshi-P is tossing one liners about a very intricate process. While I'm sure some things can't be as difficult as he implies (he knows he wants the grand companies so I don't know why they're taking so long other than the battle system priority), they're not as simple either( anyone knows how long it takes to design a new zone? Especially without reusing the same layouts?).

I think you are wildly overestimating the number of people in the dev team. I would guess at something like 15 people or so.

There's been pictures of the dev team before and it's about 50 strong.

There's been pictures of the dev team before and it's about 50 strong.

If you mean the pic from the letter of the producer, that was the upper management that consisted of like 35 people and the actual team is four times that size.

That's not even the largest it could be, TERA's development team consists of 200 people. At this point you can't just bring in more people and assume that the development would speed up, so whatever 130 or so people SE has, that will have to do. It's enough though, as long as they can work efficiently.

____________________________

SE:

Quote:

We really want to compete against World of Warcraft and for example the new Star Wars MMO.

Depends how you define indie, there are LARGE indie devs out there I think Richard Garriot runs one that's pretty hefty in size as do a few other big names who broke away from the likes of EA and Activision to form new companies. As they don't have a major publisher and/or haven't released any games with a long term agreement with a single publisher they fall under the definition... Independant

#20Shredmastah,
Posted:Apr 17 2011 at 12:38 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Wow they are FINALLY adding actual content to the game albeit painfully slow.. Maybe in another 6 months it will be content worthy of reinstalling. Maybe.

On the topic of Hatching Tide, when you complete the first quest and get the Pristing egg cap, your Lodestone Profile picture changes -> Here's mine.

Also has anyone been able to access a higher level quest yet? Or knows what comes after you finish the r5 quest in one city? I've heard that some people have started the r5 quest in different cities but have gotten the same options as before for a Pristine Cap.

From what I can see, there are 5 caps in the game. The first one is made with Earth, Lightning, Water and plain Archon egg. The Chocobo hat looks to be like it is upgraded from the pristine. Then there are 3 coloured Archon eggs that must be combined with some other combination of eggs to get the other caps. Perhaps there is a rank requirement to access the quests for each cap? Not sure if it is something like this?

I have no idea how the quest is supposed to work. The guy tells me to find archon eggs and whatnot but gives me no hints to how I could achieve that. I got a water archon egg from the dreamer but it's not even in the list of needed items, so I assume there is going to be trading involved.

Depends how you define indie, there are LARGE indie devs out there I think Richard Garriot runs one that's pretty hefty in size as do a few other big names who broke away from the likes of EA and Activision to form new companies. As they don't have a major publisher and/or haven't released any games with a long term agreement with a single publisher they fall under the definition... Independant

That's true, but I'm leaning more towards garage-band type enthusiasts I suppose. Somehow all the devs that used to work for big companies, that make small companies still smell a bit too corporate to me ^_^

I am actually pretty interested in this quest too, so far I only have an archon egg, not sure how to get the elemental eggs, but then again I spent most of the weekend getting my brother into the game and my wife back into it (the new NMs actually got her re-addicted...)

IF they are actually 150 people working on this game, wtf are they doing? They must be very lazy?

Different sectors each working on a different gameplay aspect (UI, Transportation, Companies, Battle, AA, Crafting & Gathering, BG, VFX...) and within those sectors there are people whose task is to prepare content for the monthly patches and people who are working on the overhauls that work on a separate schedule and do not coincide with the timing of monthly patches.

This has been officially stated already, so I do not know why this has to be asked anymore. They are rehauling the game, not making sure their tiny playerbase knows exactly what they are doing at any given time 24/7. It is useless to even talk about the concepts as long as the specs and costs has not been finalized. We will simply find ourselves in a similar situation from pre-Beta with their "direction and position affecting combat"-visions that never really came to fruition. Is that what you want? 'Cause that's what you'd be asking for.

____________________________

SE:

Quote:

We really want to compete against World of Warcraft and for example the new Star Wars MMO.

Sig same issue, though today I finally got a water... no one wants to trade though ;;

Maybe the other hats are waiting on more people to trade things... and we won't see them unless people start trading eggs like Pokemon... (I highly doubt it, but it was worth a shot to get people trading)

Do the Egg Helmets have special stats or drop items like eggs or cookies.In Ul'dah people was shouting for egg types It seem interesting listening to the shouts.Since I'm a Gridania person I wonder is it worth cutting into my leve time.

How do you get the other egg helms? I've seen images of all the other helms on a comprehensive list of all the new items this patch brings... so how duz we get dem helmz?

I would imagine that being the helmets are "unique", once you get one and move to another city's quest, it will be forced to give you a new one as long as you have the first one equipped or in your inventory. Not confirmed by any means, but based off of XI and the "unique" tag that would be my guess.

I've obtained the Pristine Egg Cap from Ul'dah, and moved on to LL where I obtained 4 more eggs (one of each type), and I tried turning in with the egg cap in my inventory and on my head, but all she says is:

Fhlae: Back with more eggs? Fhlae: You are a greedy git! Thought ye had me proper fooled, did ye? Well, I ain't givin' you another one. And don't go tryin' t' trick ol' Fhlae with posh clobber and foreign accents. I never forget a face. 'Specially if they look like a dog's dinner.

Anyone have any other ideas on how to get the upgraded versions of the egg cap?

How do you get the other egg helms? I've seen images of all the other helms on a comprehensive list of all the new items this patch brings... so how duz we get dem helmz?

I would imagine that being the helmets are "unique", once you get one and move to another city's quest, it will be forced to give you a new one as long as you have the first one equipped or in your inventory. Not confirmed by any means, but based off of XI and the "unique" tag that would be my guess.

When an item is "unique" it means you can only have one at a time in your inventory. If you try to complete the quest at another city with it in your inventory or equipped, you will get an error saying you can't. You would have to move it to your bazaar or dump it onto a retainer to get another one.

And it has been confirmed on the Official Forums by a player called Jacien that completing the quest in all 3 towns will all give you the same Pristine Egg Cap. When you have completed all three, you can still collect Earth, Water, Lightning and Archon eggs and turn them in for more caps. However there is no mention of how to access the higher level caps so it is either; not related to the completion of the first quests, the quests for the next caps are in different locations or just not yet implemented.

How do you get the other egg helms? I've seen images of all the other helms on a comprehensive list of all the new items this patch brings... so how duz we get dem helmz?

I would imagine that being the helmets are "unique", once you get one and move to another city's quest, it will be forced to give you a new one as long as you have the first one equipped or in your inventory. Not confirmed by any means, but based off of XI and the "unique" tag that would be my guess.

When an item is "unique" it means you can only have one at a time in your inventory. If you try to complete the quest at another city with it in your inventory or equipped, you will get an error saying you can't. You would have to move it to your bazaar or dump it onto a retainer to get another one.

And it has been confirmed on the Official Forums by a player called Jacien that completing the quest in all 3 towns will all give you the same Pristine Egg Cap. When you have completed all three, you can still collect Earth, Water, Lightning and Archon eggs and turn them in for more caps. However there is no mention of how to access the higher level caps so it is either; not related to the completion of the first quests, the quests for the next caps are in different locations or just not yet implemented.

The event started on the 15th which was last Friday, so perhaps the caps will be released on a weekly basis?

Edited, Apr 20th 2011 8:48pm by Magnesium02

I just finished the Gridania quest after completing the Uldah quest previously and dumping the cap on my retainer. I got the same cap and haven't seen anyone else with the others. I would guess too that they will be released at a later date.

Trade the eggs to people or trade them in to npc? I sold my egg for 2 Gil when i read the journal and it said something about trading to other people.I'm not going to bug other Gridania crafting people to trade an egg with no reward.

According to the database, don't know how reliable it is, there is another set of three quests called "The Dreamer's Dilemma". My assumption is they will be released with the patch on the 25 and include at least one of the new caps.